Before the Beginning
by LeighaGreene
Summary: When Victor Dubenich showed up in that hotel bar, he had already hired Eliot, Hardison and Parker for his little "retrieval" job. Now a 5-part series explaining how such a situation may have occurred. (Originally a one-shot. Got a request for an expansion that I couldn't resist.)
1. Eliot's Recruitment

**[This is an expansion of the original one-shot 'Before the Beginning' for Crisdin, who wanted to see all the first impressions.]**

Before the Beginning

2008, before "The Nigerian Job"

The vibration of the phone against the hard surface of the table by the door was deafening in the otherwise silent apartment. The man who had been sitting, cross legged, in the center of the room, opened his eyes and glared at it, apparently for ruining his meditation. He picked up on the second ring.

"Hello? Is this Eliot Spencer?" a rather nervous, male voice asked.

It was. But anyone calling should know better than to ask that. Along with the fact that the caller had decided one in the morning was the perfect time to call (never mind that Eliot was, in fact, still awake), it screamed amateur. "How did you get this number?"

"Ah, erm… My head of security knows a guy. He said you specialize in retrieving things that have been stolen?"

Eliot suppressed a groan at the caller's lack of subtlety. It could be worse. At least this didn't seem to be an assassination. He would be making a point of finding this 'guy' and reminding him not to give his contact information to just anyone, though. "Who is this?"

"Victor Dubenich, Bering Aerospace."

"I'll be in touch," Eliot said shortly, and hung up before the possible client could say anything (more) incriminating. His phone was supposed to be untraceable – he had paid good money to ensure it – but that didn't mean that Dubenich's was.

…

In Chicago, Victor Dubenich glared at his phone, then at his head of security.

The taller man shrugged. "I told you, shoulda let me do the talking," he said.

"He said he'd be in touch."

"Then he'll be in touch."

"You'd better be right about this, Samuels…"

…

It was the work of two minutes' googling to confirm that Dubenich was, indeed, a vice-president at Bering Aerospace, and that his office was located in Chicago. Even if the job turned out to be a bust, Eliot mused, he had been in New York too long. His hands were already packing the non-essentials before the decision was consciously made (the essentials were always packed). _Might as well head west for a while and see exactly what the damn fool wants_. Another ten minutes, and one of Eliot's less-well-known aliases was booked on a red-eye to the Windy City.

…

Over the past fifteen years or so, Eliot has perfected a skill he calls napping – reaching a restful state of meditation, semi-conscious and still-guarded, even in the most questionable of circumstances. It's not as good as truly sleeping, but then, he can't remember the last time he had a good night's sleep, anyway. At least this way there are no nightmares.

When he disembarked at O'Hare, five hours later, he was, therefore, as well-rested as ever despite his lack of sleep, if not quite so alert as he might be in a fight. With several hours yet to go before it would be reasonable to call and get an appointment with his potential client, there was plenty of time to inspect the safe-house he had set up on the outskirts of town three years before. (Whatever else he may say about his line of work, it did at least pay well enough to maintain identities and apartments in half a dozen major US cities.) There was no evidence of surveillance, by government officials or any of the various groups who dearly wished to kill him, so after an hour of silent watching, he let himself in, retrieved the driver's license and car keys associated with the owner ("David Parsons") from the bedroom safe, and slipped out to re-stock the kitchen.

…

A quarter hour flirting with Dubenich's secretary on the phone netted "David Parsons" a lunch meeting, and conveniently distracted her from asking exactly what the purpose of the meeting would be. No doubt Dubenich would be irritated to have his schedule shuffled with no explanation, but it wasn't as though Eliot was about to say, 'oh, yes, this is about whatever it is you want me to steal.'

The airline VP was a horribly unimpressive, pudgy little man. He was accompanied by an ex-FBI agent who was most likely the "head of security" whose "guy" had recommended Eliot. This solved the problem of communicating that he was, in fact, Eliot Spencer, and not David Parsons quite neatly: the ex-FBI agent whispered something in his employer's ear, at which his expression shifted from red-faced irritation to clear nervousness, obviously concerned about contracting a retrieval specialist rather than waiting for the law to come through for him.

After a bit of hemming and hawing, the man outlined his problem: an engineer had defected from his company, taking all of their designs for a new, top-of-the-line plane to his chief competitor. Dubenich's R&D department would be out millions if Pierson Aviation managed to scoop them on announcing the new plane. What he needed was someone to retrieve the stolen plans before Pierson held their shareholders' meeting at the end of the month, at which they were nearly guaranteed to make their announcement.

"No."

"No? What do you mean no?"

"I mean I won't take the contract. I deal with physical items, not… intellectual property. Do you know how many copies of those plans they could have made by now? You need someone who deals with computers and shit."

Dubenich seized on this suggestion like a lifeline. "Like a hacker?" Eliot shrugged. He really didn't know how any of that tech stuff worked. "Shit. All right. A hacker…"

The man was still muttering to himself as Eliot walked away.


	2. Hardison's Recruitment

Before the Beginning (Part II – Hardison's Recruitment)

Finding a hacker was a little bit more difficult than finding a retrieval specialist, simply because Samuels didn't know a guy who knew computers. It took six hours of getting bounced around different awful websites, sending emails from anonymous, auto-generated accounts and getting spammed with questionably legal pornography before Victor caved. He was certain those fuckers on 4chan were sitting in their mothers' basements laughing their asses off at the wild goose chase they sent him on. No more. He ordered Samuels to enquire discretely as to whether any of his engineers might be able to contact a suitable hacker.

Brown, the engineer, managed to get a response that seemed legit in only an hour and a half, the bastard, which meant he was now officially part of the conspiracy.

…

Alec Hardison was working on a new robotics program when an IM alert pinged. He checked it reflexively and cringed when he saw a message had been sent to one of his oldest screen names (created back when he thought name puns were cool).

 **FNB:** ** _Hey Hardy, you still in the biz?_**

He did a double-take at the sender. He hadn't heard from Brianna Thomas (Your Friendly Neighborhood Banana) since they were both seniors at Oak Hill High, and they hadn't parted on the best of terms. When Alec had showed Banana the work he did with the Bank of Iceland getting his Nana's medical bills paid, she got cold feet and stopped talking to him. She almost certainly wasn't looking him up just for old times' sake.

 **Hard'y_Workin':** ** _I could be. Who's asking?_**

 **FNB:** ** _Got a guy putting feelers out for what seems like your kind of job._**

Banana was one of those hackers who poked around simply to see what they could get away with, and never did anything illegal aside from breaking through security. _His kind of job_ almost certainly meant something shady. He had a reputation for cracking impossible systems, and had snagged major paydays on more than one occasion doing freelance work for the odd corporate client. Still, he was surprised Banana would throw him a job. He doubted her opinion on actually stealing things had changed since the last time they spoke.

 **Hard'y_Workin':** ** _What's the catch?_**

Obviously she still knew him well enough to understand what he was asking, because she responded almost instantly.

 **FNB:** ** _Guy's a total noob. Amateur hour._**

Translation: He's drawing too much of the wrong sort of attention, and we (the mostly law-abiding hacker community) want him out of our hair before he triggers some kind of sting.

Well, Alec could work with that. Clients who didn't understand a damn thing about what they were paying for were the easiest to con out of a few thousand more than they wanted to pay.

 **Hard'y_Workin':** ** _What address is he using?_**

Banana responded with both the potential client's anonymous email and his IP address. Alec ran a trace on it while he composed an introductory email offering his services. It came back faster than he expected, and even better, the client was located right here in Chi-town. Good and good. Yeah, he could work with that.

…

Samuels ran a check on the guy Brown turned up and discovered the name he gave was a suspected alias of one Alec Hardison, whose list of alleged cyber-crimes was impressively long, but largely unproven. He was, it seemed, very good indeed. His services didn't come cheap, either. He had demanded ten grand up front as a consulting fee, just to sus out the security on Pierson and determine whether he was willing to take on the actual job.

Victor (reluctantly) gave him half up-front, and promised him the other five grand as a bonus if and when he agreed to take on the job.

…

Pierson Aviation security was _tight_. They had the latest internet security updates (it was a little astounding how often people just didn't bother with basic security), which was nothing Alec couldn't get around, but the plans the client wanted recovered were stored on secure, _isolated_ servers, which meant Alec was going to have to get into the server room if they wanted to make sure he got every copy. Physical security wasn't his area of expertise _at all_ , but he could probably get in if he had a couple weeks to plan.

Dubenich, the client, was _not_ pleased when Alec made his report. _Apparently_ there was a time limit the asshole hadn't mentioned.

Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing Alec could do about it. "Look," he said, sliding a file with his findings across the table at the café Dubenich had chosen. "You want those files taken care of, I'm your man. But I can't do it without gettin' inta that server room, an' ain't no way in hell I can do that in a week. Y'all need someone who knows about building security – physical security – and gettin' in and out, y'know man? I can't do it alone on this kind of short notice!"

"Fine!" Dubenich had grumbled, snatching up the file. He looked like he was going to say something else, but his security guy bent down and whispered something in his ear, and he went from being absolutely pissed to only moderately annoyed in about three seconds flat. "Fine!" he repeated. "We'll be in touch."

"A'ite," Alec said coolly, watching the two men walk out. They weren't going to find anyone else who could do the job better or faster than him, but even if they didn't come back, he at least got a cool five grand for two hours' work.


	3. Parker's Recruitment

Before the Beginning (Part III – Parker's Recruitment)

High above an insufficiently padded warehouse floor, a young, blonde woman hung, suspended from a home-made (though very professional-looking) climbing harness, upside down and apparently unconscious. A phone vibrated silently in a specially designed pocket at the small of the woman's back, startling her from her peaceful nap.

She tugged it loose and answered only a little sleepily, "Hey Archie."

"Parker? Were you asleep? It's ten-thirty in the morning!" the old man on the other end of the line reprimanded her. It was actually sometime in the afternoon, since she was in Sweden, not Florida, but it was safer if even Archie didn't know exactly where she was, so she kept that to herself. She didn't see why it should matter, anyway.

"Uh… yes?" the confusion was evident in her tone as she released the knot holding her in place and slid to the ground, still inverted. When she reached the ground, she rolled bonelessly over her left shoulder and detached herself from the line, lying on her back to give her blood a chance to flow back from her head. Why shouldn't she sleep when she pleased? Everyone knew thieves were nocturnal, anyway.

Archie should know that, seeing as he used to be one, back before he decided to retire and move to Santa Monica to be closer to his grandchildren. But he was grumbling about keeping regular hours and responsible adulthood, as though he had no idea. Hypocrite.

Soon she decided she was unlikely to faint if she stood up, and moved to get a bowl of cereal, her favorite snack. The crunching of it seemed to bring Archie back to the present, as he said, "Parker, I have a job for you."

That was odd. Archie didn't often set her up with jobs anymore. Since she started planning her own heists at seventeen, he had only asked her to collaborate on a handful of projects. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure. A prospective client asking to speak to you about an infiltration job, or so I gather."

Parker considered this a moment, then decided it sounded interesting enough to look into. "Got a number?"

Archie rattled it off, and she hung up after answering several pointless questions about her general health and wellbeing, now fully awake and eager to find out more about this mysterious job.

…

Victor Dubenich was surprised when, not an hour after he called Samuels' contact, an unknown number (with a country code he didn't recognize) contacted him in return.

"Dubenich," he answered sharply.

"Parker," came the response – a light, feminine voice. "I hear you have a job for me."

Victor repeated the sob story he had told the retrieval specialist and the hacker. The thief, unlike the two men, seemed utterly uninterested.

"So what do you want me to do?"

…

"Well, I already have a hacker willing to take care of the files, but I need someone who can get him in and out of the server room undetected," Dubenich explained. "And I need it done by the end of the month."

"I can get in and out. I can get your man in and out." She didn't even need to know the building to know she could definitely find a way in – probably in less than an hour. "But I won't guarantee his safety or his part of the job," she added, outlining the terms she would agree to. She had only helped other non-thieves break into places twice, and both times it had gone wrong, through no fault of her own.

"It's the Pierson Aviation building, in Chicago," the client said, as though this meant something. She was in Stockholm, so it did mean she would have to fly there, which would take a day and a half at least, but it was only the 23rd. There was time.

"Half a mil," she demanded, opening negotiations on the costs of her services.

"Give me a minute to talk to my… associates," the man said, and hung up.

That was just rude, Parker thought, stretching idly as she waited for the pay-phone to ring. Archie was the only person she allowed to have her actual cell number. Everyone else she needed to talk to (mostly fences, and a few suppliers of hard-to-acquire climbing gear) had their own permanent communication solutions. She simply memorized their numbers and called them whenever she needed to, from pay phones or lifted cells.

Five minutes and twenty-three seconds later (other people never meant a minute when they said it) the phone rang. Parker answered it and waited for the man to speak. Eventually he did, rather hesitantly.

"Um… Parker?"

"Half a mil," she reminded him, picking up where they had left off.

"My associates and I were thinking more along the lines of a hundred thousand," Dubenich counter-offered.

Ha. As though he actually knew what he was asking her to do. If it was just her, she might have taken it, but to move some hacker in and out? That was at least three times as much work. There was no way she would be settling for less than three hundred grand. "Four-fifty."

"You're not offering us a guarantee," the man argued. "We're going to have to bring in another player as insurance. We _might_ be able to stretch it to two."

"So now you want me to drag two dead weights in and out of this tower? Six!"

"You – You're not supposed to go up!" He sounded angry and surprised. She didn't know why.

"You changed the terms!" she accused.

There was a bit of muffled argument as the phone changed hands on the other end of the line, and a much more self-assured voice said, "Parker? One hacker, one retrieval specialist. Backup, not a liability."

"Who is it?" she asked suspiciously. She knew all of the retrieval specialists who would be anything but a liability

"Hacker's a kid called Hardison. Retrieval specialist Eliot Spencer."

Parker considered this for a long moment. Hardison was an unknown quantity, but he always had been. Spencer was good. He might, actually, be the best, as far as straightforward retrievals went. He was, she grudgingly admitted, possibly an asset. "Three flat," she said at last, settling on her initial goal. "Final bid."

The second man was gone, replaced by Dubenich's whiney voice. "Three hundred grand. Done. On delivery."

Parker was a little leery of transfer on delivery, but she figured she could always get a phone and confirm the transfer before handing over the files. "Done."

Several minutes later, after extracting the contact information on her two tag-alongs and the location of her target, she hung up, and set off to pack and make her way to Chicago.


	4. Meanwhile, in Chicago

Before the Beginning (Part IV – Meanwhile, in Chicago)

[There is a deleted scene from the first episode on youtube that explains why Nate was in Chicago.]

Between the blaring of the fire alarm and the seizure-inducing flashing lights, Nate Ford's hangover got the best of him (he wasn't drunk – he wouldn't show up to a job interview _drunk_ ). He vomited unceremoniously in (near) the hiring manager's trashcan, just as the man was about to tell him he was in.

After that, even foiling a robbery in progress hadn't helped him make his case. The hiring manager's boss had showed up to see what all the commotion was, and instantly took a dislike to the clearly hungover Nate, the mess he had created, and his warning about the heist. It didn't help that the manager (what the hell was his name again?) had immediately called the cops, whose presence scared off the would-be thieves before they had a chance to make their move, eliminating any proof that the alarm was anything other than a system error.

Nate was out on his ass, still broke, divorced, and unemployed, now with the label of 'paranoid' attached to 'drunk' with at least one company.

 _Well fuck you, too!_ he thought, making his way back to the hotel room his prospective employers had reserved for him for the next two nights. That, he had originally felt, was a good sign – they were expecting him to need to stay a few extra days to fill out the paperwork, take a tour of the offices, maybe look at apartments. Now it just seemed like a mockery. He bitterly (and with not a little petty vindictiveness) snagged every bottle from the mini-bar (the least he could do was stick those assholes with a hell of a room service charge) and resigned himself to continuing the hunt for a new job to replace _that company_.

…

"Half a mil," the thief – Parker (was that her first name or her last, Victor wondered) demanded.

There was no way he could swing that. Not if she couldn't give him a guarantee. Not if they had to hire _two_ thieves to do what (in Victor's opinion) shouldn't have taken more than one. This was getting out of control. He simply didn't have that kind of liquidity available. "Give me a minute to talk to my… associates," he said, and hung up.

"It's some woman called Parker. She wants half a mil," he repeated to Samuels.

The taller man snorted. "That's negotiable. Normal corporate espionage – a hundred grand, tops."

Victor looked at him askance, but held his tongue on asking why his head of security knew that. "She said she can't offer a guarantee."

"That's because knows what she's talking about." At Victor's confused look, Samuels explained: "I told you, the Panther's retired, but he's got contacts. She knows her shit. Getting someone else in and out, that's much harder than doin' it alone. She can't guarantee he won't fuck up."

"So we need backup, like as an insurance policy?" Brown asked.

Samuels nodded. "Spencer could do it."

"Can we just get Spencer to get the hacker in and out?"

"Probably not," the security man responded. "If I were doing security on a job like this, I'd want someone else coordinating the actual break-in. Especially on short notice."

"You did say you were on a time table," Brown added unhelpfully.

"Fine, then!" Victor was more than a little irritated now. This plan had seemed so simple at first, damn it! Just hire a thief to steal the designs, scoop Pierson, make money hand over fist. Spencer was supposed to be the most reliable, so they framed it as a retrieval to pique his interest. Easy enough. "I guess we're fucked, because I don't have the funds to hire _three_ thieves to do this damn job."

"Too bad you can't find a way to just screw them over once we got the files," the engineer said, though he didn't sound all that disappointed.

"Yeah, right," Samuels snorted again. "Like you could get away with not paying these people."

Actually, Victor thought, that sounded like a pretty good idea. They'd just need a foolproof way to tie up any loose ends, and they could promise the thieves anything they needed to get the job done. A sly smile crossed his face as he said, "I think between the three of us, we could come up with something."

After a tense, calculating moment, Samuels nodded, and Brown, though more hesitant, said, "Um… okay," clearly uncertain of what that 'something' might be.

Neither of the other men objected as Victor called the infiltration expert back and negotiated her price down. After all, it wouldn't do to make it seem like they had money to burn. The woman might get suspicious if they agreed too easily.


	5. Finding the Fourth Man

Before the Beginning (Part V – "No. Hell no.")

On Eliot's third day in Chicago, he received another call from Victor Dubenich, whose skills at contacting thieves seemed to be improving, at least insofar as he called at midmorning, instead of in the middle of the night. He still didn't quite get the concept of using an alias, though.

"Spencer? It's Victor Dubenich."

"What'd'ya want, Dubenich?"

"I… have a job to offer you."

Eliot cut him off before he could say anything else and called back immediately on David Parsons' phone. The call went straight through, suggesting that Dubenich had called from his personal cell. Idiot.

"Dubenich."

"Mr. Dubenich," he said smoothly, "This is David Parsons, we met for lunch a few days ago. If you are interested in meeting again, I will be at Joy's Noodles at half past twelve." He hung up again before Dubenich could say anything in response.

…

Dubenich and his ex-FBI security guy showed up to the appointed restaurant right on time. Eliot excused himself from chatting with an old friend in the kitchen to join them at their table.

This time, their offer was more in line with his previous work as a transporter, but nothing he wasn't familiar with: 300k to escort two individuals for one evening as additional security. Undoubtedly the two individuals were a hacker, and someone to find them an in, with himself as their heavy hitter and backup, though the way it was phrased, it could simply have been an evening of (ridiculously well-paid) bodyguard work. He wasn't about to argue with the price they offered (he secretly congratulated whichever of the other two had conned these morons into offering that much for a little corporate espionage job).

He agreed, and they shook on it before Dubenich passed him a file. "These are the individuals you will be escorting."

About two seconds later, Eliot opened the file and felt the job go south. He didn't know anything about Alec Hardison, the twenty-two year-old hacker, but he moved in some of the same circles as Parker, and knew her reputation, though they had never met face to face. "No. Hell no," he said reflexively.

"What?" Dubenich was clearly taken aback by his reaction, but Eliot didn't care.

" _Parker_? You got _Parker_?"

"Is she good?" Dubenich asked.

"She's the best. She's also completely insane." The cat burglar's reputation hovered somewhere between impossible and legendary, but everyone knew she was crazy. He heard she once _free climbed_ the Eiffel Tower and then BASE jumped off of it with a Matisse from the Louvre and one of those body-wing suits.

"So you're out?"

Eliot hesitated, seriously considering walking away, but no, he had shaken on it. In a business like his, a man's word had to mean something. He shook his head. "Look, you better have something in mind to keep her in check, or this plan is doomed from the start. She'll have us crawling through air vents or rappelling off the roof or some crazy shit."

Dubenich and his security guy exchanged a look. "We'll find someone to… coordinate your efforts," the pudgy VP offered.

Eliot nodded, and the other men left, noodles untouched. (Their loss, as far as Eliot was concerned – Sura Nok made the best phat si-io in town.)

…

"No, it's got to be someone who knows all three of them," Victor rejected Samuels' most recent suggestion of a coordinator for their little heist. "Somebody they'd respect. Someone who would be open to the offer, so not law enforcement. There has to be somebody." It was almost two in the morning, and the trio of conspirators had been at this for hours.

"What about this guy?" Brown said suddenly. He had been looking over everything they could find on the three thieves for a common link among their alleged associates.

Samuels peered over his shoulder. "An insurance guy?"

"Ex-insurance investigator. He got fired. He'd need the money."

Victor joined the other two, staring at the little laptop screen. Brown, whom Victor was beginning to suspect was a bit of an amateur hacker himself, had somehow located a file containing the names of all three thieves. It was an employment record for one Nathan Ford, former employee of IYS Insurance agency. He apparently had chased all of their criminals at one point or another, and had even caught the men, though Parker had eluded him on all occasions.

"That… could work," he said with a smile. "I'll tell him, oh, I don't know… we need one honest man to watch the thieves. It's already set up as a 'retrieval' mission. And it should be easy enough to lure him into the same trap as the others. Yes… good work, Brown. Now find me everything you can on this… Nathan Ford. I want to be sure we have enough leverage to pull him in. After all, it won't be easy getting him to work with his former enemies..."

…

As luck would have it, Nate Ford was in Chicago, put up at a hotel he could hardly afford by a company whose final round of interviews he had just failed. It was almost, Victor thought, as though the universe was handing him the man on a silver platter. Yes, this job had become about ten times more complicated than he had ever intended, but now… he could feel it beginning to come together. All would go according to plan, and by the end of the month, it would be Bering announcing their new short-range jet, not Pierson.

He could hardly wait.


End file.
